The Death of Achilles

In 1882, Erast Fandorin returns to Moscow after four years of diplomatic service in Japan. There he learns that his friend from the Balkan campaign, the celebrated “white general,” the “Russian Achilles,” hero of Plevna Mikhail Sobolev (prototype — Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev), has died of a heart attack. Suspecting that the general’s early death may have been caused by other reasons, Fandorin begins an investigation during which he will have to meet his old enemy face to face. The time of action is 1882. Erast Fandorin is 26 years old.

Boris Akunin’s novel “The Death of Achilles,” a detective story about a hired killer, is a solid detective novel, pleasant for undemanding reading and not irritating, unlike most of its modern counterparts, with stupidity or vulgarity. This book describes investigator Erast Fandorin’s inquiry into the circumstances of the death of the nation’s favorite, General Sobolev, and also provides an extensive biography of the general’s killer: the story of the transformation of the boy Achimas into a hardened scoundrel and contract murderer. The novel takes place at the end of the nineteenth century, and the main events unfold in the summer of 1882, from June 25 to June 29.
One senses that the author has done serious work studying the realities of that time: the fabric is dense, the narrative is kneaded out of credible details (means of transport, gas tariffs, the size of tips). The laws of the genre are observed: there is a dashingly twisted plot (with a somewhat disappointing denouement, admittedly—too simple from too complex), numerous episodes of spying and eavesdropping, disguises and concealment, chases and murders, as well as the inevitable triumph of justice in the finale. “Because—how could it be otherwise?” as one mystical anarchist at the beginning of our century rhetorically asked. It is written in clear literary language that, as people sometimes aptly say in discussions of online prose, “does not get in the way.”